Kirsty shook her head. ‘No.’
Enzo remembered the chapter about her in Raffin’s book. How police had searched the apartment and her office, even the house here in the south-west, and found no trace of any story that she might have been about to break. No papers or letters, and since it pre-dated the internet, no emails. Neither her editor at Libération, nor Raffin himself, had been able to cast any illumination on the object of her obsession.
Kirsty said, ‘It was during that time that Roger and Charlotte began their affair.’
‘No,’ Enzo corrected her. ‘They didn’t meet until he was working on his book, which was some time after Marie was murdered.’
‘No, Papa, you’re wrong. Marie was still very much alive when Roger and Charlotte got together. A very secret affair, apparently. About six months before her murder. And afterwards, well, they agreed to just keep it that way. Secret. In case the police would see it as a motive for Roger to kill her. So they didn’t tell anyone.’
Enzo frowned. None of this chimed with what Charlotte had told him when they first met. Then he said, ‘Why would the police even consider Roger a suspect anyway? He was at an editorial meeting at the paper the night she was killed.’ No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he recalled again, with a sudden sense of shock, the words of the old judge, Guillaume Martin: I didn’t spend all those years sitting on the bench, monsieur, without coming to the realisation that alibis can be fabricated. And then Charlotte’s words to him, only the previous day: I have often wondered just how closely the police examined his alibi. He glanced at Kirsty, concerned once more for his daughter. She was living with the man. She had borne his son, and it was still their avowed intention to marry.
They had decided to drive into Biarritz early to find something to eat and to check out the location of the specialist’s consulting rooms in the quiet of the evening. The town lay only four kilometres away, and with a gentle breeze now blowing from the west they could almost smell the Atlantic.
They went back upstairs to prepare Alexis for going out and were startled to find the door of the apartment lying open. ‘Hello?’ Kirsty called out in alarm, and ran towards the open door of the bedroom where she had put Alexis down to sleep.
Enzo was right behind her as she stopped in the doorway at the sight of a middle-aged woman standing by the bed, bouncing the baby gently up and down in her arms. She was making faces at him and Alexis was lost in fits of giggles.
She smiled at Kirsty. ‘I heard him crying from the other room when I came to turn down the beds.’ And Enzo noticed that she was wearing a black blouse and skirt beneath a cream pinafore. The housekeeper that Rafaella had spoken of. She was a plain-looking woman who might once have been pretty. But the years had not been kind to her, and the absence of any make-up seemed only to emphasise the colourless quality of her skin. Lifeless, greying hair was pulled back in a severe bun. Alexis, however, had brought animation to her face, and her blue eyes sparkled with pleasure.
‘Thank you,’ Kirsty said, but nonetheless moved quickly to retrieve her baby from the stranger.
The woman stood awkwardly, then. ‘You’re... um... Monsieur Raffin’s partner?’
‘Yes.’ Kirsty was clearly annoyed that Alexis seemed to want back to the arms of the woman who had been making him laugh. ‘And you are...?’
‘Madame Brusque. The housekeeper. Been here for years. I have rooms up in the tower.’ She seemed suddenly self-conscious. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry to disturb you. If there’s anything you need at all, you can buzz me from the reception desk downstairs. Rafaella finishes at seven.’
‘Okay, thank you,’ Kirsty said, a little coolly, and Madame Brusque slipped out of the room, averting her eyes timidly as she passed Enzo.
When she was gone, he said, ‘You were a little brusque with her.’
Kirsty made a face. ‘Oh, very funny.’ Then paused. ‘I don’t like people picking up my baby without permission.’
‘I don’t think she meant any harm.’
‘No, neither do I. But still...’ Then she frowned. ‘You know, it’s weird... I’m sure I’ve met her before, or seen her somewhere.’
Enzo shrugged. ‘She didn’t seem to know you.’
‘No... She didn’t look familiar to you?’
Enzo said, ‘To be honest, I wasn’t paying her very much attention. She’s no Rafaella!’
Kirsty glowered at him. ‘Oh, Papa!’
Chapter twenty-nine
Sunlight slanted into Bertrand’s room at an acute angle through venetian blinds, and lay in stripes across the white sheet that covered him. Stripes that followed the contour of his leg, raised under the sheet and supported from below. The softness of the pillow beneath his head felt so luxurious that he had no real desire to come fully to the surface of what felt like a very deep sleep.
For the first time in a long time, there was no pain. No sensation of any kind. He might have been floating.
But gradually he became aware of an electronic beep that sounded at regular intervals, and it dawned on him that it was keeping time with the beat of his heart. With an effort he turned his head to his left, and saw a bank of electronic apparatus spilling wires and tubes across the floor to the bed. A drip almost directly above him feeding clear liquid into a vein in his arm, sensors stuck to his chest.
His mouth was so dry he could barely separate his tongue from the roof of it, his lips cracked and sore. He tried to swallow, but it seemed there was a boulder in his throat.
He heard a door opening and lifted his head a little to see an elderly nurse bustling into the room, her crisp white uniform swishing as she walked. She leaned over and looked at him with soft, kindly brown eyes. ‘Good morning, young man,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to see you are finally awake at last.’
Morning, Bertrand thought. Morning? What morning? What day? Where on earth was he?
‘How are you feeling?’
He struggled to find his voice, then finally heard it croak in the quiet of the room. ‘Not bad.’ What else to say?
The nurse smiled. ‘Maybe now you’ll be able to tell us who you are and where we can get in touch with your family.’
Bertrand was confused. Why would they not know who he was?
Then recollection returned like a sledgehammer and set the machine beside his bed beeping at an alarming rate. He sat bolt upright, and the nurse stepped back in surprise. ‘You’ve got to get me a phone,’ he said, suddenly finding strength in his voice. ‘You’ve got to get me a phone, now!’
Chapter thirty
‘The ear is a very complex construction of multiple parts. The outer and inner ears, the middle ear, the acoustic nerve, the auditory system that processes sound as it travels from the ear to the brain.’ Doctor Demoulin sat back, dispensing his expertise with the dispassionate disinterest of a man who has made the same speech many times. His consulting rooms were in an eighteenth-century provincial townhouse that sat up on the cliffs above the Boulevard du Prince de Galles, looking out across the bay beneath the town of Biarritz, once the playground of European royalty. The doctor himself sat at a large mahogany desk with his back to a double window, and, beyond yellowing vertical blinds, Enzo could see sunlight coruscating away across a crystal-blue sea.
The furniture in the doctor’s consulting rooms appeared to be of the same vintage as the house. His office smelled of time and disinfectant, and entering it felt like stepping back a century.
Doctor Demoulin might also have come from the same era. He was a big man, his great balding cranium ringed by a tangle of silver hair, like wire bursting from its sheath. The same wiry growth sprouted in abundance from his ears and nostrils. He wore a grey tweed suit and heavy brown brogues. His hands, Enzo noticed, were enormous, with more hair growing between the knuckles. He looked at the notes in front of him. Then raised his eyes towards Enzo. He gestured a hand back across the top of his head and nodded towards the Scotsman. ‘Waardenburg syndrome?’